Suggestion: add goldilocks to the Adaptive Designs section

[graemeleehickey]

Hi,

I would like to suggest adding goldilocks to the Design → Adaptive Designs section of the ClinicalTrials task view.

goldilocks is a CRAN package for simulating and evaluating Goldilocks adaptive clinical trial designs for one- and two-arm trials with time-to-event or fixed-time binary endpoints. It uses predictive probabilities during accrual to determine whether the current sample size is sufficient or further enrollment would be futile. The package supports frequentist and Bayesian final analyses and simulation of design operating characteristics.

I think it fits naturally within Adaptive Designs because its central purpose is adaptive sample-size selection based on accumulating trial data.

The methodology is described in Broglio et al. (2014), doi:10.1080/10543406.2014.888569.

Disclosure: I am the maintainer and an author of goldilocks.

Best wishes,
Graeme

[ya-wang-git]

Hi @graemeleehickey, thanks for the suggestion. The co-maintainers will review the package, and if it meets the inclusion criteria, we'll be happy to include it in the task view.

[wiligl]

[Updated after feedback by @el-meyer ]

Pros:

• The functionality of the package for Adaptive Designs fits well into the R Task View for Clinical Trials.
• The package has been published on CRAN.
• The source code has been published on GitHub.
• The package uses unit testing.
• Multiple Vignettes are available for users.
• The method has been published in a well-known peer reviewed journal.
• The authors of the method are part of Berry consultants who are experts in the field of Bayesian Statistics.

Cons:

• The current version v0.6 was only recently published on 2026-07-29. The first version v0.4 was published 2024-12-30 on Github indicating a slow pace of development.
• The current version number v0.6 still indicates an early stage of development potentially indicating limited functionality and potential bugs.

Summary:
The package seems sufficiently functional and documented with good coding practices. I recommend for inclusion in the Task View Clinical Trials. Caveat: I did not install and test the package myself.

[el-meyer]

I agree with @wiligl's assessment and summary. I successfully installed and tested the package using the provided vignettes.

[wiligl]

Version 1.0.0 has recently been released.

Links:
https://graemeleehickey.github.io/goldilocks/
https://lnkd.in/p/dY5xDSxJ